MSM Ignoring The Victory In Iraq

We have victory in Iraq due to our brave military members, the brave Iraqi’s who stood and fought for their country, and President Bush. But where is the MSM on this great day?

Iraqi government TV has been playing patriotic music to celebrate the U.S. military withdrawal from cities, towns and villages across the country, officially set to be completed by Tuesday June 30th.

Iraqi military vehicles were also covered with flowers to celebrate the event, and military parades, complete with band music, were organized in Diyala and Diwania provinces.

The government declared a “Day of National Sovereignty” to mark the event, and has invited ordinary citizens to join evening celebrations at Baghdad’s Zawra Park for a festival of music and poetry.

Interior Minister Jawad Boulani told journalists the U.S. withdrawal is almost complete and Iraqi forces are capable of maintaining order across the country.

He says he believes Iraq’s security situation is under control. “I do not think we need to declare a curfew,” he insisted.

Why, their hiding because they said this day would never come. The left and the MSM (synonymous really) believed Bush would ruin everything he touches and now that they have been proven wrong they just ignore it or believe Obama fixed it, by doing the same thing as Bush of course, but why ruin a fantasy. They tell us all that Obama inherited this recession, its not his fault while at the same time trying to sell the case that he did not inherit the Bush victory in Iraq….it’s all him baby…..sigh.

Anyways, congrats to the Iraqi’s for proving that human beings, no matter where they live, DO want to live in freedom.

“On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Barleymash

Tick tock? Here’s a funny story to while away you time, puppy-dog. I had a girlfriend many years ago who insisted that every argument be framed to her exact specifications, very much the way you’re ignoring my source for the claim that Tenet told Bush about the lack of WMDs. “It must be in the form of a direct quote or video!” Yap! Yap! Yap! I dumped her because she was a tiresome and petty little bitch. Gee, this story gets more and more relevant every moment, huh?

Aqua

@Barleymash
Not speaking for anyone here at FA or the Bush Admin, but I’ve pretty much laid everything out for you Barley.
So, I have a question for you. You’ve pretty much shot straight with me and I with you, so don’t dodge the question, answer it straight up.

If you were President and the Joint Chiefs told you exactly what you could expect with a war in Afghanistan, (read massive U.S. casualties and a very long Vietnam type war), but offered you an alternative, that being staging out troops in Iraq to lure the jidhadists to us….what would you do? Would you go on CNN and let the American people know, which would also alert the enemy to your plan? Would you just let Al-Q and the Taliban slide, admitting that we couldn’t take them on their home turf? Be honest, I would love to hear your response.

So many dichotomies… “never” any WMDs? Capability? Intent, we already know Saddam had. And I’m pretty sure that an op-ed summary by Sidney Blumenthal, sourcing unnamed CIA agents on hearsay about what Tenent supposedly told Bush… AND based on intel provided by Saddam’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri… doesn’t quite fit that “quote by Tenet” status. But, according to BM, he dumped his ex-girlfriend because he didn’t like to be pinned down to such details and specifics when framing his POV>

Okay…

Blumenthal Sept 2007 op-ed seems to be in direct juxtaposition to the ArabNews accounts of Sabri…. the former saying the CIA paid him $200K, and the later saying it was $100K. It could be that Saddam took a 50% cut for allowing him to force feed the CIA data about his “innocence”.

But money aside, Blumenthal also says that Sabri said:

Both the French intelligence service and the CIA paid Sabri hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least $200,000 in the case of the CIA) to give them documents on Saddam’s WMD programs. “The information detailed that Saddam may have wished to have a program, that his engineers had told him they could build a nuclear weapon within two years if they had fissile material, which they didn’t, and that they had no chemical or biological weapons,” one of the former CIA officers told me.

In September 2002, Iraq’s top diplomat Naji Sabri traded information on Saddam’s alleged weapons program for cash in a French-sponsored New York City hotel room meeting, NBC reported, citing intelligence sources.

US intelligence agents believe Sabri was fully aware he was selling information to the CIA, it said.

During the cloak-and-dagger meeting, Sabri told the CIA’s middleman that Saddam possessed chemical weapons and wanted a nuclear bomb but needed much more time to build one than the CIA estimate of several months to a year.

He also denied Saddam had any biological weapons. Sabri’s tips were thought to be more accurate than the CIA’s own guesses on Saddam’s arsenal, NBC said.

Let’s see… got $100K more than the Arabs knew, Blumenthal’s CIA sources say he said he didn’t have bio OR chem weapons, and ArabNews said he confirmed Saddam *did* have chemical weapons. Yeah… that’s clear as mud.

I guess it doesn’t do much for his credibility when he broke off CIA contacts after they tried to convince him to defect, and to renounce Saddam…. I’d say that source could be pretty shaky. Looking pretty good that Saddam took a cut of him whispering in the CIA’s ear that he didn’t… no, he did… have chemical weapons.

groan…

ummmm, okay. We already know and have confirmed thru the Iraqi Perspectives report that Saddam could kick start his WMD program at will. Even Duelfer admitted that. It was one of the reasons Saddam organized his post Gulf War chemical facilities for a dual use production.

Ritter: It’s not black-and-white, as some in the Bush administration make it appear. There’s no doubt that Iraq hasn’t fully complied with its disarmament obligations as set forth by the UN security council in its resolution. But on the other hand, since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed: 90-95% of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability has been verifiably eliminated. This includes all of the factories used to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles; the associated equipment of these factories; and the vast majority of the products coming out of these factories.

Uh… okay. We won’t worry about that 5%, and his ability to kickstart a program quickly. Smoke and mirrors, as Ritter always liked to say. But apparently not *all* production facilities and missiles were “verifiably eliminated” since it’s damn hard to argue with the Netherlands missile discovery and the digging up of those non-existent mobile labs.

“The manufacture of nuclear weapons emits gamma rays that would have been detected by now if they existed. We have been watching, via satellite and other means, and we have seen none of this.”

… which is, of course, countermands just how the UNMOVIC detected the missiles in the Netherlands junk yard the following year. (increased radiation readings and satellite photos) ooops…

Global Security’s summary of the ISG final report notes Saddam maintained covert CW labs… which fits with the ArabNews account by Sabri…of which none yielded evidence that CW were actually being produced… either white gloved by Saddam, or pirated. But then they also documented source information that indicated “…M16 was planning to produce several CW agents including sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, and Sarin.”

Exploitations of IIS laboratories, safe houses, and disposal sites revealed no evidence of CW-related research or production, however many of these sites were either sanitized by the Regime or looted prior to OIF. Interviews with key IIS officials within and outside of M16 yielded very little information about the IIS’ activities in this area.

The existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN.

The IIS program included the use of human subjects for testing purposes.

Well ain’t that convenient? So “weapons of mass destruction” is destroying masses only with one method? And I always wondered… how many have to die before they consider it”masses”?

Personally, I think Mr. Margolis should stick to his experience in strategy and drop the “expert” bit INRE unconventional warfare.

BTW, anyone wonder just how much nerve gas needs to be parked atop a proscribed (that’s illegal for those of you to lazy to look it up) for it to be considered a WMD… er, dangerous weapon …. that kills “x amount”of people? And for that small amount, is it not like looking for a needle in a haystack?

Dunno… said it before and I still do. The jury is still on the WMD issue. Odd thing is no one seems to want to pursue the truth. Perhaps they believe it’s a waste of time. Or in the media’s case, they’d have a lot of years of “no WMD’s” headlines to explain away.

But I find the lack of curiosity by the led-around-by-the-nose types… well…. curious.

Barleymash

Hey, Aqua — given only the scenario you’ve painted, I might possibly consider the option you describe as a very last resort. There are innocents involved and I do really believe that American ideals compel us to protect the innocent.

But the scenario you paint is not, IMO, a rational understanding of the nature of the conflict we’re in. Terrorists are not a finite number of troops. Their weapons are not manufactured like tanks and aircraft, in a specific array of factories that can be bombed to hell. A full-grown and committed suicide bomber can be created in a moment. It’s not about training (although that’s important); it’s about vengeance. And experts have pegged the foreign membership of Al Qaeda in Iraq at just about 10 percent. So our relocation of hostilities to Iraq moved a FEW local terrorists onto our chosen turf, but it also created a NEW enemy, 90% of it home-grown and self-replenishing. The math doesn’t work for me. And remember, I really do believe we have an obligation — as it states in the Geneva Conventions that we signed — NOT to endanger civilians. And frankly, we certainly have. I firmly believe our post 9/11 conflict was NOT the Iraqis war until we chose to make it so and it has NOT generated the outcome you hope for. We still have not established stability in Afghanistan, nor have we brought the mastermind of 9/11 to justice.

Aqua

I’m taking this as a dodge. It’s easy to critize a plan. Much more difficult to come up with one of your own.
A couple of points of contention:

There are innocents involved and I do really believe that American ideals compel us to protect the innocent.

Point to one operation where the U.S. military did not take into account the safety and welfare of the Iraqi people. This will prove difficult, because we used incredible surgical precision on our air strikes and with our ground forces. But I’d love to see any proof you may have that shows we intentionally put innocent Iraqi or Afghani citizens in harms way.

Terrorists are not a finite number of troops. Their weapons are not manufactured like tanks and aircraft, in a specific array of factories that can be bombed to hell. A full-grown and committed suicide bomber can be created in a moment.

Relatively speaking, no army is finite. I do understand your point here. However, the strategy is basically the same. Take the head off the snake and the body has no clue what to do.

And experts have pegged the foreign membership of Al Qaeda in Iraq at just about 10 percent. So our relocation of hostilities to Iraq moved a FEW local terrorists onto our chosen turf, but it also created a NEW enemy, 90% of it home-grown and self-replenishing.

I beg to differ on this point. You’ll have to cite your experts here. Even if your numbers prove accurate, it matters not. It wasn’t just about Al Qaeda. Knowing that no matter where we fought, jihadists of every ilk would come out of the woodwork to battle us. Hence, logistical terrain location.

And remember, I really do believe we have an obligation — as it states in the Geneva Conventions that we signed — NOT to endanger civilians. And frankly, we certainly have. I firmly believe our post 9/11 conflict was NOT the Iraqis war until we chose to make it so and it has NOT generated the outcome you hope for. We still have not established stability in Afghanistan, nor have we brought the mastermind of 9/11 to justice.

Can’t help you here. This is your view of things. You say a majority of Americans believe the way you do, but I’ve never seen this as a statistic. Are there people who didn’t believe we should be in Iraq? Oh yeah. Do these same people have the slightest idea how to prosecute a war of this nature? NO! Please, there are the same people who couldn’t name the speaker of the house or tell you which party controls congress.

Ah yes… I remember when I was reading about that “civilian” bit. It was during the most recent Israel-Gaza conflict, and in relation to the jihad movements (which is, of course, not just AQ) using human shields.

GC IV, Art 28: The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.

… and was further clarified by Article 51 of the 1977 amendment to the 1949 Geneva Convention:

Art 51. – Protection of the civilian population

1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.

2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.

3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.

4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
(a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;

and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.

5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:
(a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects;

and

(b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

6. Attacks against the civilian population or civilians by way of reprisals are prohibited.

7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.

8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.

Aye: KSM, the mastermind of 9/11, is currently sitting in a cell at Gitmo.

If it hadn’t been for whiny Leftist pantywaists like yourself he would likely have already been tried, and perhaps even punished, for his crimes….

ah yes… good ol’ KSM. Coming soon to a Starbucks in *your* neighborhood when the US judicial system decides they can’t use evidence obtained with interrogations, and sets him free. You have to wonder, is this what the ACLU types had in mind all these years, preventing tribunals and trials from happening?

Wordsmith

“On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

“two former senior CIA officers”. I wonder which shadow warriors these were. Drumheller is probably one of them. He’s 60 Minutes’ “go-to” expert on intell and so full of shit-spinning, that he was rebuked by the Senate Select Committee on post-war findings. They were baffled by his claims, taken to the media, which were patently false. Seems Blumenthal is one of those media-partisans who ate it up, hook, line, and sinker. Prior to the Senate Report, the media had run at least 134 stories referring to Drumheller’s claims and criticism. And this is how spin becomes the accepted narrative.

Sabri did indeed warn that Saddam had wmd- the opposite of Drumheller’s claims.

Tenet said that the source — meaning Sabri — had said Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides, under the oil-for-food program, had been diverted to covert chemical weapons production.

As for Drumheller, he’s a lying partisan sack of shit.

His media spin garnered the attention of a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigation, which rebuked Drumheller’s misrepresentations.

This whole media circus-jerk around leaked intelligence, with Drumheller making his rounds of the usual willing suspects, is directly referred to in the link I provided to you (pg 143):

The Committee was aware of this source’s WMD reporting [Sabri] during the first phase of the Committee review, the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Assessments on Iraq, but began exploring this issue again as a result of press reports, in particular a story on 60 Minutes, “A Spy Speaks Out,” which seemed to contradict the information available to the Committee.

The 60 Minutes story focused on the account of the former Chief of CIA’s Europe Division (Chief/EUR) [i.e., Drumheller] who claimed that the source described above “told us that [Iraq] had no active weapons of mass destruction program.” This story was followed by numerous other media appearances by the former Chief/EUR such as, CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight and Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, and MSNBC’s Hardball, in which he claimed that the source said Iraq had no WMD programs.

Concerned that something may have been missed in our first Iraq review, the Committee began to request additional information from the Intelligence Community and to question current and former CIA officers who were involved in this issue. As noted above, the Committee has not completed this inquiry, but we have seen the operational documentation pertaining to this case. We can say that there is not a single document related to this case which indicates that the source said Iraq had no WMD programs. On the contrary, all of the information about this case so far indicates that the information from this source was that Iraq did have WMD programs. Both the operations cable and the intelligence report prepared for high-level policymakers said that while Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear weapon, “he was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon.” Both documents said “Iraq was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons” and they both said Iraq’s weapon of last resort was mobile launched chemical weapons, which would be fired at enemy forces and Israel. The source’s comments were consistent with the nuclear, chemical and missile assessments in the October 2002 WMD NIE. The only program not described as fully active was the biological weapons program which the source described as “amateur,” and not constituting a real weapons program.

The former Director of Central Intelligence testified before the Committee in July 2006 that the former Chief/EUR “has mischaracterized [the source’s] information” and said the former Chief/EUR never expressed a view to him, as the former Chief/EUR has claimed publicly, that the source’s information meant Iraq did not have WMD programs. The Committee is still exploring why the former Chief/EUR’s public remarks differ so markedly from the documentation.

Steve’s Salon quote:

“They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell.”

George Tenet, in his “tell-all” memoir, devotes 7 pages to debunking Drumheller, who

“had dozens of opportunities before and after the Powell speech [at the UN] to raise the alarm with me, yet he failed to do so.”

Records show that Drumheller paid Tenet’s office 22 visits during this time period.

Barleymash

That’s very cute, Chalupa. So you don’t hold Osama Bin Laden responsible for 9/11 anymore? Sure, KSM’s sitting in a cell. That satisfies you, fine. We got the job half-one and you’ve declared “Mission Accomplished” (oops there you go again.)

Mata: In post 136, were you making a point?

Aqua: Consider it a dodge if you will, but I’m not interested in falling into the “when did you stop beating your wife” hypothetical trap of your argument. For the record, I’m all for torture in ACTUAL ticking time-bomb situations. I’m all for sacrificing hostages to ACTUALLY save a greater number of innocents. I would arm insurgents to take down a murderous dictator. I have no objection to these tactics — my objection is to the idea that we’re ALWAYS in a hair-on-fire crisis. Sure, move the battlefield somewhere more practical, once you’ve established through experience that the battlefield you’re on is a serious problem. But we were NOT in a shooting war with anyone when moving the battlefield to Iraq was presented. The goal of attacking Iraq was in play long before 9/11. It was never a tactic of last resort to save American lives in Afghanistan. Justify it in hind-sight all you like, but that’s all you’re doing.

Aqua

Fair enough. You answered my question. I had a suspicion you believed Dubya wanted to finish what his daddy started. We’ll never know for sure that was his intent, but it’s certainly a fair assumption. I would like to point out that my scenario is just as fair. There is plenty of evidence to support an all out war in Afghanistan would have been incredibly ugly to watch on CNN every night and moving the front lines to Iraq was a good move.

Barleymash

Wordsmith: Nice job on documenting the arguments against Blumenthal’s reporting. It’s been discussed ad nauseum since it’s appearance, so I’m not surprised you’d have counter-arguments. But I’m always surprised when people start trashing Ritter. I mean, Ritter was right. We’ve been there 6 frickin’ years. The only mustard or nerve gas we found was from before 1991. There were no WMDs. Deconstruct the way he came to that conclusion all you please, but whether you do math in your head or show your work, getting the right answer has got to count for something. I’m sure you don’t agree, but I’d rather be right than, well, STILL apologizing for the Bush Administration.

Why yes, Barley. My point in #136 was in reference to your narrow misinterpretation of the GC. To jog your memory, you said:

And remember, I really do believe we have an obligation — as it states in the Geneva Conventions that we signed — NOT to endanger civilians.

Since collateral damage has always been an unfortunate part of warfare, and most especially with a non-GC signatory and enemy combatant/non-State opposition who uses human shields, the GC was expanded with some clarification in some, but not all, of these kinds of circumstances. And key is whether the military target offers enough concrete strategic value for destruction that it justifies the risk for collateral damage. It also specifies that if you have several military objectives in a village, you can’t just bombard the entire village at random.

Under your GC interpretation, any military object target located within a city, mosque, or other buildings which civilians patronize (willingly or not), our military or coalition could not wage an attack. That is simply not what the GC states.

So to educate you to GC specifics, and how it relates to instances where civilians are apt to suffer negative consequences, I reprinted the updated rules of engagements sections.

But I’m always surprised when people start trashing Ritter. I mean, Ritter was right. We’ve been there 6 frickin’ years. The only mustard or nerve gas we found was from before 1991.

I’m not trashing Ritter. Nor do I hold him up on a pedestal as you do for being 100% correct. He was incorrect that “all” CW production facility and missiles were “verifiably eliminated”, as proven by the discovery of the buried mobile labs (not far from where they were inspecting, BTW) and the missile in the Netherlands junk yard (another oops for Scott “we woulda found it by now” Ritter).

Your assertation that all sarin and mustard agents found were somehow acceptable as being manufactured prior to 1991 is not entirely correct. The key is was it caches declared to the UN, available for monitoring and in the sealed bunkers? No… quite the opposite. This discovery caught Saddam with his hand in the cookie jar.

From the link INRE those in particular:

They believe the mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles for which former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed to account when he made his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. Iraq also failed to then account for 450 aerial bombs with mustard gas. That, combined with the shells, totaled about 80 tons of unaccounted for mustard gas.

It also appears some top Pentagon officials were surprised by the sarin news; they thought the matter was classified, administration officials told Fox News.

An official at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) headquarters in New York said the commission is surprised to hear news of the mustard gas.

“If that’s the case, why didn’t they announce it earlier?” the official asked.

As the Bush admin stated often, Saddam was not declaring all the facts and assets on CW agents he possessed… regardless of the year of manufacture. That discovery proved that accusation as undeniably true.

So now we know, beyond any doubt, that Saddam possessed undeclared and illegal mobile labs and missiles with longer range than permitted, and he possessed unaccounted for nerve agents. Well, at least *some* of us know beyond any doubt this is true. You are still clinging to pro-Saddam fantasies. Or perhaps that’s just BDS fantasies.

Manufacturing CW requires both facilities and expertise. We already know Saddam never declared all his labs, and we most certainly never captured all the experts. Were the experts foreign entities? Were these labs completely built from scratch with equipment smuggled into a war zone? Or renovated from dual use facilties? The latter is most likely as Saddam procured the dual use equipment for use thru out the 90s.

Iraq’s historical ability to implement simple solutions to weaponization challenges allowed Iraq to retain the capability to weaponize CW agent when the need arose. Because of the risk of discovery and consequences for ending UN sanctions, Iraq would have significantly jeopardized its chances of having sanctions lifted or no longer enforced if the UN or foreign entity had discovered that Iraq had undertaken any weaponization activities.

ISG has uncovered hardware at a few military depots, which suggests that Iraq may have prototyped experimental CW rounds. The available evidence is insufficient to determine the nature of the effort or the timeframe of activities.

Iraq could indigenously produce a range of conventional munitions, throughout the 1990s, many of which had previously been adapted for filling with CW agent. However, ISG has found ambiguous evidence of weaponization activities.

In short, Saddam possessed undeclared labs and CW caches, and retained facilities where the program could be easily kickstarted because of a dual use design. Saddam was also proven to have intent.

Thus your most confident claim that there were no CW in Iraq is premature and, at best, pie in the sky. As I said…. I believe the jury is still out on the truth, and it’s a damn shame that there is little curiosity. But I guess that big time backpeddling on years of “no WMD” propaganda, and loss of credibility, serves as a serious deterrent.

I doubt that any of the sources you hang your confidence on believed Saddam was an innocent victim with a change of heart about possessing chem/bio and/or nuke weapons. And all agree that he was in a position to ramp up to speed quickly once sanctions were removed. In the meantime, he did quite well eroding those sanctions with the black market and the UN’s OFF. ‘

Saddam’s deposition is a good thing, and was official US policy since Clinton’s Iraq Liberation Act. It was sanctioned not only by that legislation, but by overwhelming Congressional approval on the AUMF, which contained at least 23 “whereas” reasons with only 7 or so pertaining to Wmd.

Iraq has a much brighter future on it’s present course, and they’ve paid dearly for the price of governing themselves. I’m sure this bugs the tar out of you, but it is what it is.

I love it when people trot out child predator Scott Ritter as a reliable source on WMD.

His “rightness” on that matter all depends on which of his statements you choose to cherry pick.

Since Ritter has been on every side and the middle of the WMD issue it’s easy, and quite disingenuous, for his non-critical thinking cheerleaders to say “he was right” as long as they ignore the statements that he made in the opposite direction.

Perhaps if the WMDs in Iraq had been guarded by a 16 year old girl wearing a Burger King crown Ritter would have had better luck sniffing them out.

Wordsmith

Not entirely accurate (as Mata points out), but even if conceded…..so what? How does that invalidate/delegitimize the decision to finally enforce UNSCR 678? When weighing together all the intell info we pulled together at the time, the intell that pointed to Saddam as being a wmd threat outweighed the voices who cautioned otherwise. The case for war was built as much around capability and intent as much as the potential that he had posession of. President Bush never said the threat was imminent. That was language used by Democrats. President Bush said we had to act before the threat became imminent; because if it’s imminent, then we would have responded too late.

Our intell on WMD appears to have overestimated Saddam’s status on those; but the CIA also underplayed the al Qaeda-Saddam links, which are extensive (and no, I did not overstate collaborative links- nor did Bush or Cheney; and no, I did not say Saddam had a hand in orchestrating the events of 9/11- a different argument). And given Saddam’s love for wmd and his extensive ties to and open state-sponsorship of Islamic terrorism, in a post-9/11 world, what the Administration feared was the marriage of the two: wmd attacks delivered by terrorist proxies. It’s a CIA myth that a secular Saddam would not collaborate with jihadis for common short term goals. The Iraqi Perspective Project pilloried Paul Pillar’s noncooperation theory on this.

I’m sure you don’t agree, but I’d rather be right than, well, STILL apologizing for the Bush Administration.

Who’s apologizing for the Bush Administration? I’m very proud of the fact that Bush kept America safe from another 9/11 terror attack on U.S. soil. And that’s related as much to military action in Iraq and Afghanistan as it is to diplomacy and cooperation between nations, disrupting al Qaeda financing, intell, wiretaps and Patriot Act.

I’m sure you don’t agree, but I’d rather be right.

So, you got anything to debunk the Downing Street Memos?

Just what is it I’m supposed to “debunk”? I think it’s legit, although it’s a shame the reporter felt the need to destroy the original copy. And revisiting it, I still don’t see how this is supposed to be some “smoking gun” “a-ha” “gotcha” official document that “Bush lied, people died”. It’s a source speculating about a source speculating about a source speculating about what Bush was thinking about.

Can it be argued that the Administration was mistaken about wmd (due to CIA’s oversell)? Yes. That they knew there weren’t wmd? No. That they knew for certain that they’d find wmd? Not so certain (even Rumsfeld’s “parade of horribles” which was a checklist of everything that could possibly go wrong in Iraq listed the possibility that they might not find wmd)- and that was part of the point! We just didn’t know. But in a post-9/11 world, we were no longer willing to wait him out and tolerate a metastasizing cancer upon the world who practiced a decade of defiance and deception, and kept us guessing.

Given that Saddam was a constant menace throughout the 90’s with media reports that had linked him to bin Laden back then, the problem of Iraq and unenforced UN resolutions, any Administration would have been remiss not to take Iraq into foreign policy considerations on day one; and derelict to not examine whether or not Saddam had any involvement with 9/11 after it happened.

The burden of proof was upon Saddam. Not the UN. Not the U.S. Saddam played his cards and ultimately paid the price when he underestimated the intent of this president and assumed more of the same: more angry UN resolutions and saber rattling that meant nothing to him, perhaps an aspirin factory or two bombed, which he could weather, perhaps more cat-and-mouse games with UN inspectors…followed by the status quo (minus the fact that he was close to achieving a lifting of sanctions….after which….well, go read the Duelfer Report) of remaining in power.

This part of the memo seems to contradict “Bush knowing there were no wmds”:

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made “no political decisions” to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced. The memo also said American planning, in the eyes of Mr. Blair’s aides, was “virtually silent” on the problems of a postwar occupation.

“A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise,” warned the memorandum, prepared July 21 for a meeting with Mr. Blair a few days later. It also appeared to take as a given the presence of illicit weapons in Iraq – an assumption that later proved almost entirely wrong – and warned that merely removing Saddam Hussein from power would not guarantee that those weapons could be secured.

A transcript of the memorandum was posted Sunday on the Web site of The Sunday Times of London, after The Washington Post, citing one of the British paper’s own correspondents as a source, published excerpts. No image of the original was included, The Times said, to protect its source; a note on the Web site said the last page was missing.

A number of independent investigations including the Robb-Silbermann Commission, Butler Report, and SSCI Report on Iraq Prewar Intelligence have exonerated the Administration of manipulating intell and pressuring analysts to “fix” the intell around the policy.

In private conversations intercepted by U.S. intell, Iraqi officials spoke as if Saddam continued to possess wmd; even Iraqi generals believed Saddam possessed them. Intell agencies around the world and UN officials believed Iraq possessed wmd.

Of course…..the Bush case for war was built around a lot more than the belief that Saddam was in possession of wmd stockpiles.

From the dreadful neocon, Doug Feith, War and Decision pg 331:

Nor were those errors an essential part of the Administration’s rationale for regime change. Suppose that President Bush had made the public case for war entirely accurately, in light of all that we learned afterward about Iraqi WMD programs. He would have presented the case essentially as he did- but without using the CIA’s incorrect assessment about stockpiles. He would have said that Saddam still intended to produce WMD and had preserved the ability to make chemical and biological weapons within a few weeks.

In 2002, the idea of U.S.-led military action to overthrow Saddam had broad support across the United States, including in the Congress. Would those who supported the war have failed to support it because Saddam was three or five weeks- or even twenty weeks- away from having the chemical and biological weapons we thought he had? Would anyone concerned about Saddam’s obtaining nuclear weapons have been comforted to hear that he had simply put his enrichment program on hold, even though Iraq might still import fissile material and produce a nuclear weapon in less than twelve months? Saddam had the technicians and scientists necessary to produce a nuclear bomb- and he retained the intention to do so after economic sanctions were lifted.

If not for Bush’s decision in 2003, President Barack Obama in 2009 would have not only Iran and North Korea to contend with, but Saddam’s Iraq- a wmd-loving friend and ally to the jihadi movement- to fence-straddle over as well.

Wordsmith: If not for Bush’s decision in 2003, President Barack Obama in 2009 would have not only Iran and North Korea to contend with, but Saddam’s Iraq- a wmd-loving friend and ally to the jihadi movement- to fence-straddle over as well.

Shame on you, Word… we could have had another “czar”. The one who teaches Obama to juggle? And that would be one more (government) job saved and/or created.